Top 10 Reasons Why Hitler Lost WWII

[Bengalzona]

Quote:10. His Allies in the Axis of Evil

Having no luck in enticing England to join in a fight against the USSR Hitler had to look for other, less powerful countries. Italy was the natural choice having an ideology similar to his but when WWII started their military equipment was already outdated. Other countries like Romania and Hungary were enticed in the Axis but neither could provide high quality military assistance.

Hitler's allies actually helped him as much as they hurt him.

The Wehrmacht was augmented by millions of volunteers from throughout Europe and the Middle East. Croatian volunteers filled 3 divisions. Spain supplied the "Blue Division". Between 800,000 and 1,000,000 emigres and defectors from the Soviet Union formed the Russian Liberation Army and the Hilfswillige. Even the SS drew tens of thousands of volunteers from other countries. The Wiking and Nordland SS divisions were two of the most famous and were created from volunteers in other northern European countries. These millions of volunteers were part of the German army.

The "outdated" equipment thing is overrated. Finnish troops, a pseudo-ally of Hitler's, stopped the Red Army in its tracks in 1939-40 with 'outdated' equipment. The fact is that over the course of the war, most equipment became 'outdated' at some point. The tanks that the Wehrmacht rolled over France with in 1940 were already outdated. Germany opened the invasion of France primarily with Panzer I's (lightly armored with only machine guns), Panzer II's (lightly armored with only a 20mm main gun), Panzer III's (reasonably armored, but undergunned with a 37mm main gun), and Panzer 35's and 38's (Czech tanks confiscated by the Germans with decent armor, but small main guns). None of the German tanks were a match for the French Renault R35 and Char B, which were heavily armored and had superior main guns (the Char B had a 75mm gun and a 47mm gun). They didn't have to be. The Germans relied upon their 88mm anti-tank guns, their artillery and the Luftwaffe to destroy the French tanks sent against them in a piecemeal fashion (as Mallorian69 mentioned, this was almost exactly the same way the Americans would take out most of the heavier German Panthers and Tigers in France later).

As for Italy, the problem with the Italians wasn't equipment. And it wasn't their soldiers. Their problem was leadership. In particular, their strategic leadership. Poor planning and execution was indicative of nearly every major Italian campaign. Mussolini, like Hitler and Stalin, was active in promoting which generals would lead his troops. But unlike those two, his selections were universally lousy.

But Italy served a greater purpose to Hitler and Germany: it kept the British, and later the Americans, tied up in North Africa and Southern Europe until 1944 with a reduced number of German troops invested. Of course, the Americans actually wanted to be 'tied up' there until they were prepared for D-Day (they could show Stalin they were doing 'something' in the West without having to take on the burden of invading France until they were ready... and until the Soviets had beat up the Germans pretty good). People think that the campaigns in Greece, North Africa and Italy kept huge amounts of German troops off the frontlines in the Soviet Union. It did keep some troops from there. But the numbers were not huge. Panzerarmee Afrika (a.k.a. the Afrika Corps) never had more than 3 or 4 under-strength and ill-supplied divisions. The invasion of Greece and the Balkans was conducted by Kleist's Panzer Group (9 divisions), which was then moved to the Russian front to fight at Kharkov (BTW- the main concern for the Germans in Greece and the Balkans was not that the British would be able to assemble and invade there. Britain was too weak for that and the U.S. had not entered the war yet. The main German concern was to prevent the British from building airfields there to attack the oil fields in Romania. The Americans would eventually do that from North Africa and Italy with long-range bombers anyway). Italy was defended by the 10th German Field Army (roughly 80,000 men at most). Now, this was a large number of troops, no doubt. But it is nothing compared to the half million men that Germany committed to defending Norway throughout the war.

The fact is, numbers of troops was not the problem for the Germans on the Eastern Front. They had sufficient troops to accomplish the invasion. The problem, as SSF noted, was the constant shifting of objectives on that front. Had they concentrated on Moscow over the South rather than vacillating, they probably would have seen better results.

Which brings us back to Germany's allies. The problem with the Romanian, Italian, Hungarian, etc. allied troops in Southern Russia is that they were over-extended to support the 6th Army at Stalingrad. The line was stretched too far for them to effectively defend. It was not so much a matter of out-dated equipment.